Social Cognition Flashcards
How do you define theory of mind?
The ability to think about mental states in ourselves and others, understanding that mental states influence behavior
What are the three things to exhibit if we want to have theory of mind?
- must understand that people have mental states
- must understand that others’ mental states can differ from your own
- must understand that mental states guide behavior, not reality (regardless of whether those mental states are accurate) e.g., look for things even when they are not actually there
What are the classic tests used to measure theory of mind development?
- Change of location false-belief task
- Children under 4 years would say the person will come back looking for the thing on the basis of reality rather than their mistaken beliefs, whereas children from age 4 systematically answer them correctly - In the unexpected content task, children younger than 4 usually answer incorrectly both that a naive other person will think there is a pen in the box and that they themselves initially thought so, whereas older children tend to master both questions.
What are some controversies among when children exhibit theory of mind?
- The task may be too complicated in terms of verbal instructions and children needing to keep track of many things. Therefore, the false belief tasks may be too hard for these children.
- But many studies show reasoning about mental states earlier in development, e.g., they may think desires drive behavior
- Infants can succeed even at false belief tasks that use different (easier) methods
What causes developments in the theory of mind?
- Theory Theory (Piagetian theory that children are scientists)
- Kids form theories in their mind and it’s those theories that are causing development
- Once children start to develop conscious thinking, it starts with “behavior is driven by desires”. (2-3 yrs old)
- Then it becomes more advanced with development, they will start thinking that “ beliefs guide behavior”. (4-5 yrs old)
- Finally, children think that “people can have false beliefs”. - Simulation theory
- Use imagination, role-taking, etc
- Putting yourself into someone else’s perspective, e.g., imagine I am a mom instead of a child - Modular theory
- Brain maturation, regions of the brain that respond to the theory of mind (false belief reasoning) are growing and causing plasticity
Or, just explained by the development of other skills?
- Executive function, working memory, attention, keeping track of oneself’s perspective and other people’s perspectives
Different influences on the ToM?
of siblings
- Individual differences
- The more siblings, the better/earlier theory of mind
- Pretend play
- Simulation
- Parenting
- Parents who talk about emotions can help predict the success of ToM - Language
E.g., Bilingualism is associated with the theory of mind and perspective-taking - Autism
- Autism children may answer less correctly on FB tasks as compared to neurotypical or downs syndrome children. (Modular theory and brain activities may explain this)
We form social groups based on what characteristics?
Gender
Race
Age
Religion
Nationality
Grade level
Career
Major
- Easier to navigate and understand the world
- Think about humans in groups increases cognitive simplicity
- Evolution is adaptive in terms of in-group and out-group
How is race an example of social group? How does understanding of race change across ages?
Race is socially constructed, not a BIOLOGICAL category!
Infants – prefer familiar race faces, and respond to race as a perceptual category
- By 3-4 years – can explicitly characterize race, and reason about skin color as a stable characteristic
- E.g., understanding skin color is a stable characteristic
Later in development – start reasoning about race as a stable and informative feature of identity (“essentialism”)
- Earlier for children from marginalized racial groups, maybe due to understanding of race as an important feature of their life
What is an explicit attitude?
attitudes a person consciously endorses and can report
- In dominant racial groups – in-group positivity + out-group negativity
White individuals’ self-reported preference for in-group members decreases as they grow up (from 6 yrs to 10 yrs to adults)
How does explicit bias towards race change in marginalized racial groups?
- Racial segregation “separate but equal law”– Clarks “Doll Study” (1947)
- Black children did not show in-group positivity toward the black dolls
- As they grow older, they have higher in-group positivity
- Still these days, there is less in-group positivity, to choosing individuals who are from the same racial group
What is implicit bias?
Beliefs, and attitudes that are activated in response to social cues
E.g., police’s reaction to violent scenes, how quickly they pull out a weapon toward white or black people
May have less awareness
May be more difficult to control
How do we measure implicit bias? - Implicit Association Test (IAT)
- Measures the strength of association between concept (i.e., race) and attribute (i.e., evaluation, good vs. bad)
- Measures reaction time
- A faster response suggests a stronger association (ie, between white + good)
- If you have a bias towards white people, the reaction time is less when white and good are paired together
How does implicit bias change over time?
- In individuals from dominant racial groups – positive in-group bias
- As people grow up, their implicit pro-white attitude stays the same
- In individuals from marginalized racial groups – no pro-in-group preference nor pro-out-group bias
- Equivalent, no preference either way
Where do the biases/attitudes come from?
- Biological evolution of ingroup bias
- From a safety perspective, beneficial to look for people who are like us - Social norms: social/cultural evaluation of dominance
Media, teachers, parents, the process of socialization
- E.g., white folks in North America receive all sorts of information on social media; whereas black children see themselves depicted negatively in media, and many racial stereotypes
- Bi/muti-racial individuals, are in-between. They prefer white folks but not as much as the white folks do.
What are some concerns about IAT?
- Side/order effects
In proper use of IAT, side/order effects should be counterbalanced! Also typically found to not have an impact - Reliability?
This can be impacted by context, scores do vary from one test to the next. But over several tests, fairly reliable - Meaningful?
Is predictive of behavior on average for an overall group, but predictions are small
